LESSONS FROM SCHOOL SHOOTINGS

After Newtown, educators explore how county districts responded to tragedies

He sees his most important role as connecting with teens, building positive relationships and helping guide them toward good decisions.

“Kids who might not have a role model or good influence at home, I hop in and guide them along the right path,” said Thornton, a Granite Hills alum.

That creates an open line of communication that ferrets out threats, rumors, bullying and other troublemaking that can pose devastating consequences if not addressed early on.

In Carlsbad, none of the city’s three roving school resource officers was on the campus of Kelly on Oct. 8, 2010, when Brendan O’Rourke, 43, hopped a fence and sprayed the busy playground with bullets.

Two girls, ages 6 and 7, were wounded.

The school’s guardians that day came in the unlikely form of three construction workers laboring in the cafeteria. They weren’t armed, but they rushed the shooter and tackled him, effectively preventing more bloodshed.

The school district has not added more officers to the city’s schools in the shooting’s aftermath but has raised expectations for patrol officers to be more involved in the schools on their beats.

“We’ve had three for a long time. We can always use more, but with funding these days, that’s not really going to happen,” said Carlsbad Sgt. Steve Thomas, who oversees the school resource officers.

As police departments and school districts dealt with budget woes in recent years, funding for on-campus officers was reduced.

Today, 37 school resource officers work campuses throughout San Diego County, and 45 sworn officers make up a separate San Diego Unified School District Police Department. That leaves many of the county’s 1,100 public, private and charter schools with no resource officers, and most without a full-time presence.

Be prepared for the worst

All three San Diego County schools had emergency protocols in place before the shootings, but nothing makes you question those plans more than when violence strikes.

After the campus attacks, the Grossmont Union and Carlsbad districts revamped their disaster plans, adding active shooter training for police and students, streamlining lockdown procedures and making safety enhancements to schools.

The Grossmont district rushed to make upgrades before the fall semester began in 2001. The result is one of the most comprehensive safety models that Officer Thornton has seen in his experience with school resource officers across the region and nation.

The schools installed doorknobs that lock from the inside — an issue currently being addressed at schools across the state. They installed surveillance cameras. They repaired public address systems so emergency messages can go out campuswide. They painted numbers on rooftops, giving each building an easy identifier for police helicopters overhead.

A “red book” was created for each school containing current staff and student rosters, maps, gas and water shut-off points, and other instructions. Two “crisis boxes” were placed on each campus, holding master keys, a “red book” and other supplies.

Staff members were given greater access to initiate a lockdown, an ability that before was only in the hands of a few people. Now, a lockdown can be initiated remotely from anywhere.